Harry Potter and the Seal of the Elder Gods
by His Lordship Havoc
Summary: Harry, Ron and Hermione learn that there are dark forces even Voldemort shouldn't screw with. Please RR


Harry, Hermione and Ron all stared at the smooth, greenish stone. Harry stared at it long and hard, trying to recall anything he could about these markings. The stone, nearly flat and about palm-sized, had five points, all of which were chipped or broken off at the end.  
The writing was sigularily queer. It didn't look or even feel... human.

Ron, unsettled by the silence of his partners, broke the silence that hung over them. His voice echoed in the large, dark and empty cave.

"Alright, here we are. We know what You-Know-Who was after, this rock. But now what?"

Hermione sucked in her breath, studying the marking on the vaguely unhealthy and abhorrent stone with her usual scholastic intensity.

"Well Ron, it's obvious to anyone who's not totally thick that-"

"Are you calling me thick! Because I have no clue what it all means!"

Hermione ignored him. She leaned in closer, edging toward the stone as it sat upon it's base, unmoving, mocking her intellect. "Harry, what do you think?"

"I think I probably have enough in my Gringott's account to buy that new broomstick I've had my eye on. you know, the Thunderclap X-7. I'll bet Malfoy could never touch me on the Quidditch field if I had-"

"Oh, for the love of God!" spat Hermione in exasperation. "What's with you? Are you compensating for something!"

Ron just sighed under his breath and popped an anthrax-flavoured Bernie Botts Bean.

"Pay attention, Harry!" snapped the bushy-haired girl. "Don't make me go red-queen on your skinny ass!"  
Harry noticed that Ron seemed to pale at the mere mention of Hermione's threat.

"Well," Harry said, trying to distract Hermione, "maybe we should go to Dumbledore, tell him what we've found. That Voldemort-"

Ron shuddered and fainted at the mention of the Dark Wizard's name. The audience laugh track responded to the name with a series of loud and very on-cue "boos!".

Harry continued. "Dumbledore will know what to do with it, right? I mean, doesn't he know everything?"

"Awfully quick to forgive and forget, aren't you?" sniped Hermione.

"Er, maybe we shouldn't bring this up for another few weeks, Hermione..." said Harry nervously, looking out at the readership. "June 21st has barely passed, not everyone will have read the newest book yet..."

"Sissy." grumbled Hermione. "Has you ever noticed that he's only good for plot exposition and occasionally sending a small trinket or animal to help solve a riddle or deliever a weapon? When has he ever actaully actively helped us slog through a mystery?"

Harry shuffled from foot to foot, flustered. "Well, he... I..."

"Dork!"

"You two are both nutters," quailed Ron, rising to his feet while popping a placenta-flavoured bean. "We need to get out of here and just forget we saw this! This place gives me the creeps!"

Hermione scowled at the smooth surface of the stone, all her thought bent on it. Leave it to the mudblood to-

"It's a portal!" she exclaimed suddenly. You-Know-Who must be planning to open a portal to wherever this thing leads and bring allies to our world!"

"How do you know that!" Ron asked, annoyed. "It's a bleeding rock! Bad guys don't come out of rocks, they come out from under them!"

Ignoring him, Hermione continued. "But I cannot read the script. Dash it, why didn't I take that Dark Arts class on supernatural languages!"

Harry sighed. "So, here we are, an impasse. We can't unravel the riddle of the rock's script, and the rock is no match for my speed on a broom. A deadlock."

Hermione turned and looked at Harry, her eyebrow twitching slightly.  
"You... haven't taken a Bludger to the head recently, have you, Harry?"

She turned her attention back to the maddeningly defiant soapstone sigil, with its equally infuriating glyphs. "Ron, go get my text books from my room. I must have SOMETHING in my library that'll help us out."

Ron paled again. "But... but... I'd have to go back through the Forbidden Forest to reachthe school... by myself... and there's sp-sp-sp-spi..."

"Just do it, tootsie roll!" Hermione snapped.

But Ron was frozen to the spot.

Harry, snapped out of his Quidditch reverie and the wet dream of peeing on Draco Malfoy's grave by the mention of food (or so he hoped that's what Hermione meant), looked at the strange writing on the stone.

So alien, so terrifying. He felt the jagged scar on his forehead throb.

"Sumerian," he whipsered. "It's Sumerian. The language of the world's first great urban civilization."

Hermione turned to look at him, her eyes a mixture of disbelief and exapseration.

"No-it-isn't, you four-eyed moron! That is NOTHING like cunieform! What the living hell were you doing when we were studying ancient scripts! Did you have you hand under Cho Chang's skirt again!"

Harry flushed angrily and backed down. He'd be having words with Cho, asking her to not cry out test answers at certain moments.

Hermione sighed. "Well, we're no farther along with this mystery than when this mini-fic started. Ron's a cowardly git, you're an idiot and I cannot figure this little mystery out. Maybe we really do need old Dumbledore to send us a hint..."

Without warning, they felt a small and annoying presence behind them. Slowly, they turned and watch as Ginny, the youngest Weasly, walked with a measured pace into the cave, her eyes glowing, a blank expression on her face.

"Oh, you're fucking kidding me!" snorted Hermione. "Dumbledore's really really slowing down if that's the best he can do. He needs to restock on his Geritol Weed."

Ginny walked between them, seemingly unaware of their presence. Stopping in from of the hideous stone, she held a hand out over it. Her voice was a disturbing and inhuman montone.

"Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehovah,  
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton Ou Agla Methon,  
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,  
ceventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,  
daemonia Coeli God, Almosin, Gibor,  
Jehosua, Evam, Zariathnatmmik, Veni, veni, veni!"

Hermione blinked. "What was that? That's not what the stone says. You just tried to order Israeli cable!"

Ginny remained still, but a hollow and befuddled voice, that of Dumbledore, echoed from her slackly-open mouth. "Damnantion, that's right. Where IS that spell of opening?"

Seconds later, a mephitic flood of some hideous, inhuman language spilled forth from Ginny. The stone glowed and the cave itself began to tremble. In the Stygian darkness, the three friends could feel their hair standing on end. In Hermione's case the effect would have been amusing, under other circumstances.

"Y'AI 'NG'NGAH, YOG-SOTHOTH H'EE-L'GEB F'AI THRODOG UAAAH! OGTHROD AI'F GEB'L - EE'H YOG-SOTHOTH 'NGHAH'NG AI'Y ZHRO!"

The entire cavern assumed an unhealthy green glow. The miscreant students looked around in an ever increasing panic as the true features of this unholy place evidenced themselves.  
Harry fell to his knees, his scar aching terribly, throbbing until it pulsed in time with the glyphstone. He tried not to scream. Cho hated it when he screamed.

Ginny slowly wheeled about and made to leave. She stopped in front of them and once again they heared Dumbledore's befuddled, arcane voice.

"I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you cannot put downe; by the which I meane, Any that can in turn call up somewhat against you, whereby your powerfullest Devises may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to answer and shall commande more that you..."

Ginny then left the cave, goosing Harry on the way out.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, OLD MAN?" screamed Hermione at Ginny's now dim, retreating figure. "JEEZUS!" she roared, wanting to hit something. The floor shook, grabbing her attention.

The diabolism of their surroundings took on shapes of great horror. Dark red ichor flowed down the walls, crawling across the detritus-littered floor. Ron gagged and threw up. "How humiliating," he thought. "I don't even have a vomit-flavoured bean to blame this on..."

Eldritch fantasy and macabre rolled over reality before Harry's eyes. The walls, which he had though previously bare, were now lined with corpses, incomprehensibly ancient and maddeningly inhuman. Trophies, gory and qliphotic, occupied niches around the cave. The very floor revealed itself to be wickedly carven. The black stone, not unlike basalt, but with a wholly alien quality, almost spoke to a darkness in him, telling of it's transport from far, far beyond this galaxy by enigmatic beings, mere knowledge of whom could shatter his psyche and heralded only self-annihilation.

Hermione gasped softly, her eyes widening as these unnatural personal revelations threatened to upset her notion of cosmic right and wrong. This blasphemous, unthinkable place drenched her soul with terror. Her jaded sensibilities were assaulted by this hideous extremity of human outrage. What manner of person, what insane, deviant intellect would DARE to tamper with powers such as those now warping around her? She gripped her wand tightly, fighting the urge to turn it on herself and use her Ex Oblivione spell to end this nightmare.

Ron shat himself.

The walls of the repellent chamber seemed abominably alive. Where huge, winged daemons carven of onyx and vile ruby were vomited from wide, grinning mouths wierd green and orange light and noxious vapours. The formerly unnoticed bas-reliefs and palimpsests that ran around the cave in wide bands ruffled into kaleadoscopic dances of death. Red charnel things and black tapestries hung ominously, almost leering at the interlopers.

This nameless place, haven of some satanic and neurotic virtuoso of blasphemy, almost seemed to bend in over them, threatening to crush their bodies, their minds and their very souls.

Harry felt his brain screaming in agony, these tortured hints of another universe nearly consuming him. He focused past the seething, screeching pain in his head. He felt a new threat closing in around him, his blood running cold.

Dementors.

He tried to use his wand, but he was paralysed. He forced his eyes open, seeing the tall, haggard and utterly deadly shapes float towards him. He knew this was to be his end.

A pinpoint of brilliant light appeared about the hellish soapstone. It grew slowly, becoming to bright to look upon. The Dementors turned, sensing this new power.

Oo;; "Oh, uh... you're busy... shit, um, sorry, we didn't know. I have to go and get my coccyx buffed and Tony here has a psychiatrist's appintment. Uh, we'll pick this up later, okay, Harry?"

And then they were gone.

Completely bewildered, Hermione looked at Harry. "What the HELL is going on? What's happening around here that makes a Dementor run like a Frenchman?"

Harry shook his head. "I.. have no idea."

"Gotta be a pisscutter of a power if Dementors know better than to stick around." Ron said breathlessly. "And speaking of knowing better than to-"

"Well, at least we're closer to solving the mystery of this fic's title." said Hermione triumphantly. The glowing pinpoint had become a large orb, larger than even Hagrid. They stepped back as it expanded, mindful to not get caught in it.

A bright flash...

Never had Harry known such apprehension.

Before them was the portal. A hideous orange light illuminated blasphemously old steps, so many that they descended out of sight. A charnel smell crept over them, a smell more sickneing that anything they had ever known, Hermione's cooking included.

What followed was almost like a dream for Harry. Not a dream, but a nightmare so deep and so real that he feared his former life was nothing more than an illusion to escape the horror of this realm of soul-upheaving despair and evil.

A lethal silence pervaded as they gaped at the portal. Although aware of their imminent peril, the gross and perverse luxuriousness of what might await them down those ancient, hellwrought steps was too much to resist.

"This is a power, an evil power far greater than we have ever faced. Far stronger than Voldemort," said Hermione with gravity. "Before lies the gateway to the Elder Gods. Beings from before the cosmos, from beyond our mere material existence. Beings from whom madness and extinction can be the only result of our exposure."

Harry nodded. "Yeah, it's dangerous. Ron, you go first."

"But Harry...", squeaked Ron, modeling a new shade of pale terror for his friends. "I ALWAYS have to go first."

"It hasn't killed you yet, has it? Why tamper with a working formula?"

"Harry's right, Ron." added Hermione. "This may be our only chance to thwart Voldemort's plans, and YOU are always integral to their success."

"Yeah, by nearly getting my ass killed! I'm outta here!"

Ron stopped short as the other two pointed their wands at him, the tips sparking menacingly.

He looked back at the portal, the fiendish light calling to him.

"O-okay..." he said, his voice quavering and sounding unusually small to him. "I... I trust you, Harry... you're my buddy, and you'll always look out for me, I know that..."

"Yeah yeah yeah, get moving, carrot top."

His hands trembling, Ron popped a gravestone-flavoured bean and walked toward the portal. The unholy orange glow bathed him, his blood turning to ice in his veins. The niter-encrusted steps felt unbelievably old and damnnably evil. But he continued on, knowing his friends had his back.

Harry and Hermione lost sight of Ron as he descended and rounded a corner.

"Ron? Can you hear us, Ron?" called Hermione.

No answer came forth.

Harry shifted around uncomfortably. He lowered his wand. He sensed something on the very edges of his perception. He didn't like what he felt and hoped it would chase Ron instead of hanging around him. He had some intentions with Hermione at a quiet moment...

Several minutes passed before they heared Ron's voice, calling up from the infernal deeps. Calling in a shaky voice more portentous than the loudest shriek.

"God! If you could see what I'm seeing!"

Speechless, Harry and Hermione could not answer. They waited in silence. Then came the frenzied tones again.

"Harry, it's terrible- monstrous-unbelievable!"

Suddenly terrified and strangely tingly-warm from the looming threat of danger, Hermione squirmed and called down after Ron. "Ron? Ron! What is it?"

Once more came the voice of their friend, still hoarse with fear and now tinged apparently with utter despair.

"I can't tell you, Hermione! It's too utterly beyond thought- I dare not tell you, you'll think I'm nutters! No one could know it and live- Great God, I never dreamed of this!"

Then Ron's voice came, a wilder pitch of consternation permeating.

"Harry, Hermione, for the love of God, seal the portal and get out of this if you can! Quick! leave and make for the outside, it's your only chance! Do as I say and don't ask me to explain!"

But they were rooted to the spot. A piteous cry reached up to them.

"Beat it! For God sake, close the portal and beat it, you two!"

Some long suppressed instinct of friendship sprang up in Harry suddenly and he leapt into action, approaching the top of the stairs. "Ron, brace up, I'm coming down!"

But at this offer the tone of Ron's voice changed to a scream of wild fear.

"Don't! You can't understand! It's too late- and my own fault for trusting you! Seal the damn portal and run for it- there's nothing you or Hermione or anyone can do!"

Harry listened as the tone changed, acquiring a softer quality, as of hopeless resignation. Yet it remained tense through anxiety for his friends.

"Quick... before it's too late."

Harry tried not to heed Ron. He tried to break the paralysis that held him, to rush down to his sidekick's aid. But Ron's next call found Harry still inert in the chains of stark horror.

"Harry, hurry! It's no use- you and Hermione must go- better one than three- the portal..."

Thirty seconds of silence, which seemed like an eternity. Then Ron's voice, soft and faint.

"Nearly over now- don't make it harder- seal the damned portal and run for you lives- you're losing time- so long, Harry, Hermione... won't see you again..."

And here Ron's whipser swelled to a cry, a cry that gradually rose to a shriek frought with all the horror of the ages.

"Curse these hellish things- legions- My God! Beat it! Beat it! BEAT IT!"

After that there was silence. They sat, stupified, for what seemed like aeons. Shamed into action, Harry called down after his friend, over and over again. "Ron! Ron! Answer me! Are you there!"

And then they heared the crowning horror of all, an unbelievable, unmentionable thing. In that dank, ancient tomb of eldritch horror, they heared the voice that by it's timbre alone slew Hermione and sent Harry Potter mad, damning him to life in Azkaban. Unearthly, inhuman, evil, disembodied, it was the end of Harry's experiences in our world and the beginning of his nightmare, languishing in a prison for the permanently mad, beneath the waning, tenebrous moon.

And this is what the voice said:

"You fool. Weasly is DEAD!"


End file.
